Philosophy East and West, Volume 65, Number 3, July 2015, pp (Review) DOI: /pew

Transcription

1 Landscape and Travelling East and West: A Philosophical Journey ed. by Hans-Georg Moeller, Andrew K. Whitehead (review) Sarah Mattice Philosophy East and West, Volume 65, Number 3, July 2015, pp (Review) Published by University of Hawai'i Press DOI: /pew For additional information about this article Access provided by National Taiwan University (14 Dec :08 GMT)

2 In presenting Gandhi s brahmacarya in his own words and without criticism, one can still go on to raise deeply troubling moral, spiritual, social, and political issues relevant to the controversies and scandals. For example, there are certain brahmacarya passages in Gandhi writings, sometimes not mentioned in the book, that strike me as hopelessly muddled and irrational, reactionary, or blatantly immoral. In other words, a sympathetic hermeneutical approach to Gandhi can reject many of Gandhi s particular descriptions, interpretations, and claims while selectively reformulating a more adequate Gandhi that speaks to our contemporary values and experience. Third, Howard correctly emphasizes Gandhi s organic, dynamic, contextualized, dialectical approach. In such a Gandhian view of reality, all of life is interconnected, and Howard shows how brahmacarya for Gandhi is interconnected with and necessary for the realization of truth, nonviolence, satyagraha, swaraj, and his other major concerns. In the same way, one can focus on swaraj, or the other major Gandhi principles and values, and show how swaraj is interconnected with and necessary for the realization of truth, nonviolence, self-realization, egalitarianism, nonpossessiveness, and social justice. A basic question is whether all of these interconnected links function on the same level and have the same status in Gandhi s approach, philosophy, and practice. Examining the thousands of pages of Gandhi s writings, I would submit that sat (truth, reality) and ahimsa (nonviolence) have a moral, epistemological, and ontological priority in Gandhi s philosophy. In conclusion, Veena Howard has authored a very impressive study that deepens our knowledge of Gandhi. By focusing on the controversial brahmacarya and other forms of Gandhi s ascetic activism, she shows how Gandhi is both surprisingly traditional and surprisingly innovative and nontraditional. In interpreting how Gandhi used moral and spiritual force, tapping into resources from ancient times to the present, in order to engage in action to achieve self-rule, independence, equality, freedom, and social justice, this book offers solutions for many of our most pressing contemporary issues. Landscape and Travelling East and West: A Philosophical Journey. Edited by Hans- Georg Moeller and Andrew K. Whitehead. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, Pp. v isbn Reviewed by Sarah Mattice University of North Florida s.mattice@unf.edu Landscape and Travelling East and West: A Philosophical Journey, is a delightful edited collection of seventeen essays thematically clustered around ideas of travel and landscape, primarily involving Continental and East Asian philosophical tradi- 988 Philosophy East & West Volume 65, Number 3 July by University of Hawai i Press

3 tions. As editors Hans-Georg Moeller and Andrew K. Whitehead point out, travel and landscape are rarely thematized in contemporary philosophical discourse, despite the fact that more and more academics are able (and often required) to travel greater and greater distances. In the Introduction, the editors note that contributors discuss thinkers such as Confucius, Socrates, Descartes, the Buddha, and Heidegger, and explain that [t]he essays in this volume look at these philosophical protagonists and others, trying to explore what travelling, landscape and related notions meant for them as thinkers and writers as an aspect of their lived experience, as well as one of the central metaphors shaping their thoughts and texts (pp. 1 2). This collection is unusual in several ways: the contributions range across disciplines including philosophy, religious studies, sociology, poetry, and art history; traditions discussed include German Romanticism, Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Modern Philosophy, and Greek Philosophy; and the central organizing ideas of travel and landscape are theorized both literally and metaphorically. While a review such as this does not have room for a sustained engagement with each essay, in what follows I give a brief overview of the collection s four main parts, highlight some especially intriguing essays and ideas, and conclude with a few remarks about the volume as a whole. Part 1 treats landscape and traveling as philosophical issues relevant to the contemporary world. It contains essays by Mario Wenning ( Crossing Boundaries: Zhuangzi and Bashō on the Art of Travel ), Franklin Perkins ( Wandering and/or Being at Home ), Andrea Martinez ( Locality and Journeying in a Migration ), and Günter Wohlfart ( On the Way: Foolish Notes of an Old Nomadic Poet- Philosopher ). Wenning s essay opens the volume with two of the most iconic East Asian wanderers, Zhuangzi and Bashō. Wenning provides an interesting contrast between Western journeys that involve a promise of progress and ultimate arrival, and Daoist journeys of freedom or wandering without a destination. In reflecting on these thinkers, he asks the perhaps paradoxical question: what might it mean to cross boundaries by not using boundaries? Perkins essay highlights the tensions between travel and community, between the familiarity of home and the exoticism of elsewhere, and between the radical difference and yet shared humanity across cultures. In doing so, he problematizes the liberatory function of travel. The essay also contains an excellent section on René Descartes and the connections he makes between travel and philosophy. Part 2 takes a more historical focus, examining landscape and traveling as classical subjects in philosophy, and also examining artistic and aesthetic discourses pertaining to travel and landscape. It contains essays by May Sim ( Travelling with Laozi and Plato ), Robin R. Wang ( Yinyang Landscape: Fengshui Design and Shanshui Painting ), Ouyang Xiao ( Detachment and Reunion: Travel and Human Presence in Landscape ), and Rolf Trauzettel ( Landscape as an Aesthetic Person: On the Conceptual World of German Romanticism ). Sim s essay explores the ways in which although neither Laozi nor Plato advises or seems particularly interested in actual travel, both employ metaphors of travel to illustrate epistemological journeys, albeit with relevant differences. Wang s essay treats landscape as a cultural image, a human construction, and delves into connections between internal and external landscapes. Book Reviews 989

4 She uses fengshui (specifically going back to fengshui in burial practices) and shanshui paintings to talk about macrocosms and microcosms of internal and external landscapes, and draws on an exciting variety of Chinese sources. Ouyang Xiao s essay is methodologically one of the most interesting in the collection, as he attempts to respond to the problem of unidirectionality in comparative study (Western ideas/ issues make sense of Eastern ones, but not the other way around) by using Chinese painting and aesthetic categories to make sense of The Wanderer, a German landscape painting by Caspar David Friedrich. Part 3 is titled Buddhist Journeys, and includes reflections on Buddhist poetry, pedagogy, pilgrimage, and political identity. It includes essays by John C. Maraldo ( A Walk Through Some Zen Landscapes of the Heart ), Andrew K. Whitehead ( Hōben as Pedagogical Landscape ), John Harding ( Poets and Pilgrims: From Saigyō to Shikoku ), and Snježana Zorić ( Images and Mirages in Travelling through and Writing about Tibet ). Maraldo s essay opens this section by examining several Chan and Zen poems as landscapes of the heart (Ch. xin; Jpn. kokoro), including a section on Dōgen and the walking of mountains. Maraldo s essay also includes a brief but exciting section connecting Zen identifications of self and environs with certain Native American and Australian Aboriginal accounts of the relationship between person and place. Whitehead s essay explores the idea of expedient means (Skt. upaya; Jpn. hōben) understood as a pedagogical landscape, wherein expedient means are understood as necessarily relational and seen as a shared landscape. The final part 4 of the volume focuses on Confucian and Daoist discourses, especially in relation to the ideas and imagery of dao. It contains a set of essays by longtime collaborators Henry Rosemont, Jr. ( Travelling through Time with Family and Culture: Confucian Meditations ) and Roger T. Ames ( Travelling Together with Gravitas: The Intergenerational Transmission of Confucian Culture ), and concludes with essays by Paul D Ambrosio ( Going Along A Daoist Alternative to Role Ethics ), Chris Fraser ( Landscape, Travel, and a Daoist View of the Cosmic Question ), and Ady Van den Stock ( The Moving Subject: Transcendence and Reification in the Philosophy of Tang Junyi ). Rosemont s essay begins this section with his reflections on the necessarily temporal dimension of a Confucian dao, but he develops this idea with an example about a family in the contemporary world to illustrate how this Confucian dao provides an alternative to today s pervasive individualism. D Ambrosio s essay enacts a Daoist reversal, taking what is generally understood as a Confucian project role ethics and extending it into a Daoist framework, using the Zhuangzi and the idea of genuine pretending to add increased flexibility to Confucian Role Ethics. While the volume provides much fruitful inquiry, there are a few small areas of concern. The text does not contain any special characters (i.e., for Chinese and Japanese), which is a problem especially given its subject matter in travel one often encounters the otherness of language, and the absence of that was unfortunate in this volume. The volume is also somewhat limited in its sense of what constitutes East and West, and with few exceptions does not reflect on the lack of North and South in its journey. However, as the editors note, this is an undertheorized set of 990 Philosophy East & West

5 topics, and this lack may point to the value of additional endeavors in this area. Finally, as can often happen with an edited volume, sometimes the feeling of coherence between essays was not particularly tight. Some of the essays, however, emphasize the importance of walking as a way to slow down and meander through unfamiliar ground, and so perhaps from that perspective this could be a strength of the volume. On the whole, this collection of essays is an eclectic mix of philosophical reflection and poetic rumination. Many of these essays would be excellent for use in a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, although a few would be difficult to follow for students without any background in Continental or East Asian philosophy. Some of the essays Perkins, Whitehead s, and Xiao s, to name a few offer unique reflections that could genuinely have an impact on contemporary comparative practices. With its dramatically different writing styles, the volume is enjoyable to read, and illustrates some of the different philosophical journeys that are possible concerning travel and landscapes. East And West: Allama Jafari on Bertrand Russell. By Seyed Javad Miri. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Pp. xvi Hardcover $50.00, isbn Reviewed by Ali Paya University of Westminster and Islamic College, London; and National Institute for Science Policy (Iran) a.paya1@westminster.ac.uk In 1964, an Iranian philosopher-theologian, Mohammad Taqi Jafari, wrote a letter to Bertrand Russell to discuss some of the issues introduced by the British philosopher in an interview with Woodrow Wyatt (consisting of a series of thirteen brief dialogues, which were filmed for BBC television during the spring of 1959). The interview had been published in 1960 under the title Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind. The Iranian philosopher, who was also affectionately called Ostad (eminent teacher) and Allama (polymaths) by his students, wished to discuss three topics, namely philosophy, religion, and ethical taboos, which Russell had discussed, among many other topics, in the interview. Russell replied, rather briefly, to Allama s first two letters, but there is no evidence of his reply to Allama s last letter dated May 19, A year later, a Persian translation of Russell s book with detailed comments by Allama Jafari was published. Seyed Javad Miri, a Swedish Iranian Associate Professor of Sociology and History of Religion at the Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies in Tehran, has used this brief encounter between the two philosophers to discuss the wider theme of East-West dialogue and to expose Westerners implicit or explicit snobbery in their dealing with their Eastern interlocutors. Miri s book, East And West: Allama Jafari on Philosophy East & West Volume 65, Number 3 July by University of Hawai i Press